Brew 0902

One week on ... the fermenting slowed a bit in the middle of the week - it was cold, cold enough that even the heating pad couldn't quite keep the beer above 18 degrees.  It wasn't really a failing of the room as such - everywhere was cold, we had a cold snap.  However, the properly insulated, low ceiling-ed nature of the bar meant that I only had to pop a heater in there for a little while to bring the temperature back up and get things bubbling again.

At the one week mark the fermentation had slowed to almost nothing.  So, time for some hops.

50g of Kohatu dry hops into the mix.... mmm, smells yummy (both the beer AND the hops)

Now to leave it to soak in for another week or so.

Brew 00901 - Pilsner

This was an attempt to recreate the mighty success of the Pilsner I brewed in late 2013.  It turned out great.  In fact so much so that on the occasion of my birthday in January of 2014, our guests discovered it and demolished the lot.

Unfortunately, due to extreme slackness I never blogged about that one when I made it and so I have had to do this from memory.

So - Brewday:

2x cans of Black Rock Pilnser malt extract

1kg of Brew Enhancer

20L of Aquifer water

I couldn't remember if we had added any hops on brewday last time - we have done that sometimes (added a small amount of dry hops) but I really wasn't sure if we did so I left it out.

All fairly usual at this point with the only exception being that I didn't reduce the amount of Brew Enhancer to balance out the fact that I was using extra malt extract.  Common wisdom usually says if you use two cans of malt then reduce the sugar (or Enhancer) from 1kg to about 750g.  However I clearly remember failing to do that last time.  Probably because I dumped the whole bag in and then had an "oh crap" moment about it.  But since this time was about trying to recreate the success of last time I made the conscious decision to use the whole bag again.

This time for the first time I did all the prep work upstairs in the kitchen and then moved everything downstairs into the bar before adding the cold water to the fermenter.  This means the beer can brew away down there without cluttering the kitchen.  Also the temperature should be more stable down there than in the kitchen.

OG 1060

The Dogroom Bar

Expanding on the concept of Dogroom Brewing, Lynne and I have decided to refurbish the room that gave it its name.  The idea is to transform the room that is currently literally "the dog's room" into a space usable by human beings.  To whit - A bar  :)

Brew 00405 - tasting

Inmate Brew tasting

So, the brew defrosted a lot quicker than it froze.  Tonight is tasting night!

All in all ... I am a little ... underwhelmed ... The result is by no means unpleasant (which was always a possibility :) ) and definitely has alcohol in it - I'm guessing more than 10% but less than commercial wines at 12-13%, but it was rather ... thin seeming.  I could still taste the apple and orange juice, but only just.  I'm guessing that the yeast eating the sugars in the bottle didn't stop at the sugar I added and also ate up the fruit sugars, decreasing the taste.

I have seen a video on Youtube (by Craig again!) about adding back flavour after the event so I might give that a try and see how it turns out.  Right now all we have in the house to try that with is Lemonade, so I gave that a go.  Not exactly great but probably nicer than drinking it straight.

Brew 00404

Inmate Brew update

It took three days for this to freeze ... must admit I didn't expect that.  Maybe it's the alcohol.
Anyway, it's done now, so I have taken it out of the freezer to thaw.  Tasting tomorrow - I hope.

Brew 00403

The fizzing seems to have died down to almost nothing now.  Given that it has now been three weeks at it I am going to assume that the ferment has done it's dash.

There is a LOT of sediment in the bottom of the bottle, so I decide to decant it to another bottle to get rid of that before freezing it for a few days to kill off any remaining yeast etc.

The decanting didn't actually go all that smoothly.  I couldn't find the funnel and thought "I'll be ok just pouring it - the bottle has a wide mouth.  Yeah, right.  Glad I decided to do this in the sink as there was quite a bit of spillage.

Combining what I took out to make room for the sugar etc, with what I left behind, full of sediment, as well as what I spilled, I end up getting slightly under half a bottle of actual drink left.  Still, 1.5L of 'wine' isn't bad for $5

Into the freezer.

Brew 00501 - Cider

Black Rock Cider kit

Cider mix
1kg white sugar
23L Petone Aquifer water
Black Rock cider yeast

Starting Specific Gravity = 1030

I have always like the idea of making cider (and to a slightly lesser extent wine) almost as much as that of making beer.  When I was homebrewing in the '90s though, I don't remember there being any cider kits about.  And wine making seemed like a lot more work than beer, so I stuck to beer :)

I have tried my hand occasionally at making cider directly from apples (radical I know) but it never seemed to work out well.  Either it turned out so energetic that opening a bottle was as likely to end up washing the ceiling as with cider in you glass, or on one nasty occasion turn out to be slightly poisonous.

Now however, there are some more choices available.  Black Rock have a cider kit, and Lynne bought me one to try my hand at.  Given that she doesn't even like cider, this was a Nice Thing for her to do.  I am very lucky with my choice of wife  :)